Hotels near AREA15

AREA15 opened on 18 September 2020 in a 600,000 square foot warehouse complex on South Rancho Drive, west of Interstate 15 and clear of every street on the Grand Prix closure list. General entry costs nothing. You can walk in, look at the installations, eat and leave without buying a ticket at all. Individual attractions start at $5 (about €4.30) and bundled passes from $49 (about €42). Parking is free.

The anchor tenant is Meow Wolf's Omega Mart, which opened on 18 February 2021 and drew on more than 300 artists and designers. It is a fake supermarket that opens into several floors of something stranger, and most people give it two hours. Omega Mart runs later than the rest of the complex, staying open until 23:00, while AREA15 itself is open 11:30 to 22:00 daily.

Race week is the one stretch of the year when AREA15 gets genuinely crowded after dark, because it programmes ticketed parties across Thursday, Friday and Saturday and it is one of the few venues large enough to absorb people who cannot get back onto Las Vegas Boulevard. Book an Omega Mart slot rather than turning up. The compensation is that the drive runs against the traffic and never crosses the circuit.

Pro Tip: Take a timed Omega Mart entry at 20:00 or later on Thursday 19 November, when the race-week crowd is still thin, and approach from West Sahara Avenue rather than the resort corridor. Regional Transportation Commission Route 106 (Rancho) runs the length of South Rancho Drive if you are not driving.